you lye downe in the Eternall By this your arreares are paid you are nothing you are dead and you can require nothing you and your demands are fallen to the ground your service is dead and nothing is due to it but to be buried and all your miscarriages in forgetfulnesse Who do you require arreares of The Kingdome is dead the sword reignes and therefore the Kingdome is free if you will be paid take blood want spoile confusion ruin that 's all that is left of the Kingdome pay your selves of that Do you expect it of the Parliament That is dead too Poor Parliament you have eat it up your selves in greedines of pay you tore her bowels out and you can have no more But all anger is past there remaines nothing but love you are dead and live with Christ come forth of your graves stand up in the resurrection of Christ in union and fellowship with Christ The Lords host now the Lord is in you and you pitch your tents about the Lord and are the arme of God stretched out for his owne defence and for the punishing of transgressors living in the strength and Spirit of the Lord and now mighty and powerfull to execute Divine pleasure Now you are under the Captain of our salvation and at once interested in the salvation of the Nation and of Christ our Saviour Now we can pay you arreares you never stuck upon arreares till you sunk into the earth into poor earthly mindes rise you again into spirit you will count it your honour to help England freely Mony and a Saviour cannot subsist together That Spirit of Christ that once acted in you to let goe the prisoners Englands freedome and justice without price or reward that spirit shall revive in you and then you will scorne to be mercenary I know you disdaine to keep Englands woundes open to suck her blood you have hazarded your lives for justice and freedome and can't now insist upon pay you are worthy your selves and have the worth of all with you if you desire pay enter with us into Cānaan and you shall have Vinyards that you planted not wels that you diged not A land flowing with milk and hony such mercies and blessings as you could not expect The Lord is Judge he will audite your accompts and pay all that he owes you Religion flourishing in the purity of it peace and righteousnesse as Rivers and Seas the sweet holy unmolested enjoyment of your own families and estates in the presence under the government of the most high You shall now subsist in our bowels be disolved into the Church and Kingdome which is the beloved of Christ Terrible as an Army with banners terrible to the world and the God of the world to the prince of darknesse and so wee shall disband you into spirit and power the whole Nation shall be Souldiers able to draw the sword of the Spirit against all forrain power amongst our selves wars shall cease from the earth you must beat your swords into plowshares and spiers into pruming hooks to your honest trades again there will need no Iron or steely wrath but to plow up your own hearts and to cut down enemies within your own brests all our Townes and Cities are garisoned with a heavenly host and we have salvation for our wals and bulwarks we shall lye down in peace and none make in afraid while we need force we shall use you but not in civil wars you must be removed and only imployed in service against strangers if you delight to sit down by the still streames of Englands peace and feed in our green pastures of eternall love you shall if your valour makes you desirous of military actions we shall finde enemies abroad to imploy your swords against and when you under take such expeditions the Lord shall goe with you you shall have Angels spirits that shall make you invincible where ever you goe The Levellers grew out of the Army and are again shrunk into the Army and therefore we will now joyne you to the Army being mingled together In your endeavour to impose your Democracy your popular Government upon the Kingdome over-throwing and overturning all powers into the People we hear the voice of one crying in the Wildernes England is become a Wildernesse all flesh grasse all power is corrupt the Spirit of the Lord hath blowne upon it and its withered This is John Baptist that exalts the valies and brings down the hils he brings all into the waters the People God is in these Levellers casting the Mountains into the depths of the Seas plunging all into a confused People not suffering one stone to lye upon another Thy place is to be in the Wildernesse and not to come into the City to expire and dye speedily to decrease that he that comes after may increase Thou art beheaded thy devices are fallen to the ground a mushrome thou wert little and art nothing What went you out to see A reed shaken with the wined growing out of the mire of the Nation or a man clothed with soft rayment People got into Kings houses In this state thou art vanisht lost and raised in the Spirit of Christ the divine and eternall love of God and in this Kingdome there is a perfect Levell The People the originall of the Parliament and King by a free giving up themselves and and their estates to the Parliament and King are in the King and Parliament and fully pertake of the royalty and power of both and are leveld with it The People give honour and glory to the King and so higher then hee or he their Subject He that gives is greater then he that receives heer all the people are one with that spirit that is kingly that Anointing that makes Christ King and so called mine Anointed living all in the liberty of that spirit that makes Kings and are most perfectly content in the Kings greatnesse being that which themselves constitute making it themselves they live in it and enjoy it And the King is levelled to the people by his sufferings or humiliations and by his love taking in every Subject to himself humbling of himself to be but the Kingdoms Servant and wearing his Crown only for the happinesse and good of the people living together and brought into one body head and member The eternall love is the Leveller Divine Charity that lifts not up it selfe but is lifted up and being lifted up drawes all after it I rejoyce in the healing thy breaches oh London thou honourable City Thy iniquities have been great there is a righteous one under them that will carry them without the City as a scape Goat into the wildernesse we see the Lord in thee in thy greatest filth in thy violent enforcing powers above thee to thy own minde in constraining the Parliament to thy will by bold petitions urged with tumults we see darkened and shadowed the intercession of the Son of God who with violence wrests
quarters which threatens famine upon you Squeesd by taxes wrack'd with war the anvill indeed of misery upon which all the stroakes of vengeance fall A wofull Nation once the freest people in the world now the veriest slaves slaves not to one but to many Masters and those many of various and different tempers by whom you are forced to be sometimes one way sometimes another And the Church which is the joy of Saints strangely confounded that none almost knows his owne or his Neighbours Religion in such a mist of darknesse are you Chap. VIII Shewing the wickednesse of the Ministry or Clergy and their judgement THe Clergy so called have a great hand in the evills of these times and require an especiall discovery But I purpose more fully herafter to open the state of the Church and to shew the particular evils and good of every sect with their defects the reason of their difference and so reduce them all to their proper place and order which is the true vniformity And therefore shall only at this time take notice of them briefly and as respecting these evill distractions The Clergy are deeply concernd and especially eyed by Divine justice a corrupt generation and horribly departed from their Lord and Rule Christ The Son of God the Prophet the Prest the Bishop is the life original and true patterne of al Ministry And there is no true office that Christ doth not constitute by his owne presence nor no right dispensation of that office if Christ himselfe do not administer and be the thing administred and therefore all others are Antichristian and Babylonian In whom the Spirit and power of the Holy Anointing lives not It s true that the Clergy of England all sorts of them that have appeared upon this preset stage Episcopacy Presbytery and Independency have their particular excellencies from particular Angels assisting them The Bishops grave Magisteriall Authoratative Honourable and having imprinted upon them a dark and earthly form of Christ The great Bishop and of him in his Lordly or Royall priest-hood as he is exalted The Presbyters being laborious painfull zealous earnest affectionate carrying an image of the Elders and Apostles of the Church The Independent delighting in a more particular and intire union with his people of greater strictnesse and exactnesse and personal care of his flock is more truely in the Pastors or Teachers place But they are all earthly and carnall darkning the true light of Christ in their ministry and holding forth the name of Christ but not the power but their owne parts opinions readings humane and weak affections yea have wickedly departed from their Master and do not worship in the Temple in Heaven in the new Jerusalem but in Aegypt and Babylon of this world where the Lord is crucified and stand at a distance from and enmity to the Spirit of Christ They professe Christ in their way that is in enmity to him they professe they are not with him nor he with them glory in their shame which is a Worldly and a Devillish life They are ignorant of heaven came not from heaven are not in heaven neither returne they to heaven they judge not things in the light of heaven nor know things as they are in the booke of life the Scriptures of truth as they are in the Spirit of God but as they are written and spoken of in the world and so are blinde guides and have led the blinde people of this Nation into a ditch of destruction on all sides Their great unlikenes to Christ appeares in these things First Christ is Anointed with the Spirit of God he is sent of God he comes from the Father Hath all power given him in Heaven and Earth But these men all of them derive not their ministry but from men at best according to the outward fashion of the letter of the Word and so from Paul c. and that they follow most lamely and so far only as serves their turne taking indeed their ministry themselves from their earthly Fathers according to the customes and traditions of men therefore have no power at all but the power of their own reason which being weaknes it self they presently run to the power of the Magistrate and strengthen themselves with that whithout which they are most contemptible and despisable things The Bishops take away the King and what becomes of them The Presbyters if the Parliament fail they fall into the ditch Secondly Christ emptied himself and became of no reputation took upon him the form of a servant but these men are one all sides stickling for worldly greatnesse contending by all waies of cunning and policy to raise themselves to the highest point of preferment in their severall spheres pleading for their honour from the People urging and forcing from the People respect to the Ministers each party in their seasons labouring might and main with blood to uphold that interest in the Nation that they have gotten and pressing upon mens consciences to fight for Religion which is their means places honours and safeguards Thirdly Christ fore-told and desired his sufferings The Baptisme that he was to be baptized with But these men never knew their own or the Kingdomes sufferings to give or take warning but fild with the visions of their own hearts prophesie pleasing things in their seasons The glory of the Church blessed times great and wonderfull things And if their sufferings hath been declared to them by God they would not hear it but as Peter in his satanicall pride Master be it far from thee and when they had gotten into the mount of Court and Parliament favour then they cry It s good to be heer abhorring the thoughts of suffering And would be reigning upon the Throne before they touch upon the Crosse These carnall Gospellers are in all their thoughts enemies to the Crosse of Christ 4. Christs Ministry was glory to God on high on Earth Peace c. But these mens is glory to themselves and to their King and their Parliament and for want of this a sword fighting like Satans Priests Preaching and speaking the fire of their rage Pulpit incendiaries pronouncing curses and judgements upon their brethren and so giving them up to the sword of one another Priests indeed not to offer up their honours places preferments and lives to purchase peace a Christ did and they should But have offered up the Kingdome a Sacrifice to their own blinde zeale and carnall lusts together In stead of standing in the gap have made a gap and increased the divisions of the times casting not water to quench but Oyle to inflame the differences of the Nation not laying down their lives but seeking the lives of others to serve their ends Fifthly Your bitter and violent persecuting each other when you have gotten power into your hands You have been in your severall seasons the ruine of each other denying each other subsistance or the exercise of each others gifts Far from the love
it in infirmity and weaknesse T was the true light shining in darknesse but the darknesse comprehended it not We knew not our own filicity God was nigh to us the Kingdome of God in all his glory was in the mid'st of us and we were not aware of it The Lord did Reign amongst the Children of men and they knew it not while he was present they set him of a distance and would not receive their own life but in enmity did cover the face of God the majesty and Kingdome of God and gloried in their poor shadow T was a beautifull but earthly vessel raised up for a time a temporary greatnes a corruptible Crowne that we have seen standing and flourishing in prosperity but its period of happinesse is come and you shall now see it in its declining diseased corrupt estate end falling Chap. II. Shewing the Kingdome of England in its corrupt and declining estate YOu have seen the fair inside of England now you shall see the filthy outside of it The holy God took it into conjunction and felowship now casts it off into rejection and reprobation In the first his glory shin'd in this its abominable wickednesse and wofull ruine appear This Heavenly glory being in love with the earthly shadow of it self desires to approach nearer unto it and to dwell with it in a more intire and perfect union and to swallow it up into it self that it might no longer subsist out of him but be found in him But as God approaches this earth fled from his brightnes being a fraid to be swallowed into its own Life and being weake and jealous of the great love of God chose rather to continue its old form and its earthly happinesse The goodlines and majesty of God was cloathed and hid in this worldly Kingdome as a treasure in an earthen vessel T was his pleasure to break the vessel to rend and tear the old garment that he might come forth and cloath that with his glory that cloathed him with its basenes But the Pot-sherd did strive with his Maker and would not yeeld or offer up it self to God but doated upon it selfe and its own beauty Therefore God threw it off into a dark and inordinate idolizing it self to a worldly and satanicall seperation from God and love of it self making it self the substance and God the shadow and so grew to an earnest minding of its present happines and threw off God into a strangenesse and distance not to be conversed with in this world but referd him to another making those two which God hath made one Hence grew in the whole Nation King and People in all parts an eagar love of worldly things and as God threatens to take it down that he might set up the heavenly so much the more earnestly did they cleave to it and fall further and further from God and more and more laboured to load themselves with thick clay and so the whole Kingdome in opposition to the divine will are in ambition and covetuousnesse set to advance their worldly state heer is the fatall breach betwixt God and man twixt Heaven and England This breach is made by the Devil the wicked one the God of this World by which the Kingdome is become Satans and divided from God And being thus cut off from its head and life God it cannot but fall into divisions The Spirit of God fayling the band of union it must quickly be in distraction There was a destroying in the whole but it first appeared twixt head and body Thus. All parts finding their foundation fayling and some disease and disturbance in the body each begin to stickle for it self and its own interest as distinct from the other The King having a misgiving that his greatnes did not increase but rather sinck thirsts after more absolutenesse thinks it a debasing to his Royalty to have any in conduction with him as good be no King as to be in dependance upon others and so growes weary of the Parliament The People finding their liberty and priviledge sinking too begin to be jealous of their Prince and accounting him a Tyrant afraid they were going into slavery finding an obstruction in the body that favour did not flow so freely from the head as it use to doe disdaining to be kept at a distance from Government and the affaires of States growing impatient of the Princes waies censure his actions and to have a longing itch after government Drawing thus severall waies there growes of head and members two factions The Count and Royall and episcopall party and the Country People and puritan party These two grow from jealousies and discontents to malignity one against another to watch for advantages one against the other and to seek the advancing themselves and the ruining of each other labouring all that the could to rob each other and to pull and snatch from each other to strengthen themselves and so growing to a deadly enmity and when the body meet in a Parliament and so head that party they are strongly divided and the whole Kingdome being shaken and broken fall to peeces according to the working of their severall and various principles To the King goes men of honour as the Nobility and Gentry much whose honour is predominate over their reason and Religion The Episcopall patty being Monarchicall growing out of the root of the King and paternall much the Fathers of the Church men of implissit Faith whose conscience is much regulated by their superiours men that are high and great admirers of Kinglinesse taken much with that Ordinance of a King And a vast number of loose men men of no Religion but the King To the Parliament men who of a lower state and exercising their own reasons in Religion zealous and wel-affected People men of industry and labour that love freedome and to be somthing themselves Men whose consciences are their owne and so strict in them Cities Corporations Bodies and men that highly honour the Parliament men zealous for generall and common Good And by the accesse of these Parties to each other they are strengthened in their opposition of each other and fitted for their mutuall ruine Chap. III. Shewing the Kings Errors The Kingdome being divided into two parties the King first carries away The Golden ball of Government who though taken off and seperated from his true Basis The King of Kings yet is assisted by a mighty Angell by whose help he rules awhile alone and with more good and lesse evill then those that succeed In which hee appeares in High and masculine vertue as a Father mighty severe and terrible The great and undoubted Image of God living in a supremacy beyond and above all questons honoured with fear and devotion But alas being alone he soon declines his good Angel leaves him and so not able long to manage the Scepter But oppressed with his owne guilt and the curse of GOD quickly is forced to resigne it to others It hath been the Kings
In the Parliament Now is manifest the Son of GOD made flesh and dwelling amongst us Thou art here our Lord incompassed about with infirmities in abundance of weaknesse in temptations feares distresses in so poor a body as thou art not known to them they deny thee kill thee and know not what they do In this forme Thou comest to thy own and thy own receive the not Thou art in them speaking in such dark parables in such confused and un-understood wayes with such a rabble of oppressing Publicans Harlots and sinners about thee that thou art judged a Devil and to mention thee here is blasphemy to all men T is the cry of King and People Away with him away with him he is not worthy to live thou art here loaded with iniquity made sin indeed In the Parliaments assuming the power of the King his Prerogative his revenue we hear the Lord say All that the Father hath hath he given unto me All power in Heaven and in Earth The King is with us we have his power c. Christ saies in this dark poor forme The Father and I am one the Father is me the words that I speak are his and the works that I do He gives me to do them I come from the Father Thus the Son goes forth for a while appeares amongst men and the Father conceals himselfe and is not seen but in the Son and the Son challenging the honour name and power of the Father In the Parliaments undertaking the work of reformation and failing in it We now see the Lord in flesh coming amongst us and entering into The Temple and over turning the mony changers turning out those buiers and sellers those worldly Episcopall party that turn'd religion into a trade and worship into meer gaine and preferment prophesying anew forme a Kingdome but at last lost in it saying I have laboured in vaine I have spent my strength for nought and suffering under this accusation that he would destroy the Templets c. yea the Kingdome too And so the Romans come in and take away both our Place and Nation That he was a rebel to Caesar so crucified in shame betrayed sold and his Disciples leaving of him doubting his word saying We thought he would at this time have Redeemed Israel Our Lord is here in weaknesse failing in his attempts marred in his vizage more then any man so that all turne away their faces from him In the oppressing and confused Government of the Parliament We now see our LORD come not to send peace but a sword to set Father against Son and Son against Father c. Setting two against three and three against two requiring us to leave Father and Mother Houses and Lands for his Name threatning to undoe us and to strip us of all bringing of us to nothing wasting and spoiling the riches of the Nation so disolving of us that we must be borne again new-moulded in a baptisme of bloud In the Parliaments endeavour to preserve the Kingdome to uphold and maintain the freedome of it wee see the love of Christ to the World and his desire of saving it we hear him say Oh England England how often would I have gathered thee c. In the zeal and rage of both parties against each other we see darkly come forth the wrath of God against his enemies God fighting with those that fight against him the fiercenesse of the vengeance of Heaven against his adversaries cursing them raining snares and fire and brimstone upon them Thus doth the holy God dwell with and under the roofe of sinfull man Thou that knowest no sin art made sin Thou livest in those fleshly formes Thou sendest forth spirit and they are created And then doth blow upon them and they dye and wither lose their goodnesse and beauty and are tossed about as vanity as chaffe in the wind That thou mightest destroy them thou commest into the likenesse of sinfull flesh that thou migtest consume sin in the flesh appearest in flesh and so against it and under it that thou mayest at last save it And unfoldest the brightness of thy face and glory to be in perfect and undefiled purity in and under the vilenesse and basenesse of the creatures Chap. XIIII Of the second thing in saving of the Nation The Death of Christ and our fellowship in it AS God bears our sinnes so he suffers under them and we suffer in and with him and thereby is iniquity taken away T is by blood that we have remission of sinne God dwelt in the Kingdom The power of the King it was Gods God was in that majesty and dominion God was in the right and freedome of the Parliament in the peace and happinesse of the Nation in the wealth and honour of the City in the power and strength of the Army in the glory and order of the Church And God suffers in the death of all these he suffers with us loses in our losses not our blood alone but his is shed not our goods onely wasted but the Lords his they are and were and God is in union with them and suffers in them The Lord is made a curse for us our sin hath brought this curse upon God This is a sacrifice well pleasing unto God sufficient for ever to take away iniquity and to appease divine justice Though destruction should for ever wast England it would never be satisfyed but feeding upon the glory of God eating so deep into Englands sides as to reach the heart of God t is time for it to say I have enough let anger cease it doth feed upon God himself Cease to trample upon the head of King Charles God is there thou tramples upon God in him Cease to confound our Parliament Christ is there Cease to destroy the Nation t is a holy and heavenly Nation Now we are reconciled to God we were divided by death now one in death or God so loves us and is so neer to us as to suffer with us and for us our friend indeed that hath layd down his life for us The glorious love of our God is triumphing with us in and over death God is in our misery insulting over it O death I le be thy plague c. and so makes death sweet to us thou art now a lovely bed wherein our Lord and we being uncloathed of life lie down together death rends the vail and takes us into a naked enjoyment of GOD because wee could not live together our earthly in Gods heavenly Kingdome therefore must we die together we die because we have left God and he comes and dyes with us will not live without us but comes into the grave to us so that he might deliver us thence Thou destroying Angell proceed no farther The blood of God cries peace and you English mad to destroy cease crucifying the Lord of glory every wound you make Pierces the heart of God every sad and grieved spirit afflicts God every stone of scorne or
in glory and all pleasant and usefull one to another And in union with the State or Kingdome You were divided you kept them from medling with Spirituall things and they in requitall and revenge excluded you from Civill things you both in your dark and worldly state made lawes against each other The heavenly or spirituall men must not medle with earthly affaires they defile them nor earthly men act in heavenly or spirituall Thus were you cruell and unkinde to your selves and to each other one setting up an Heaven without an earth the other an earth without a heaven These in the Lord are married together in perfect union the same Lord being by the same spirit King and Priest and administring his Church and Kingdome together they are joynd in the King and must run down in fellowship together into the lower parts Now truth springs out of the earth You shall have God and Christ in the truth of the Spirit springing up in all your civill affaires in all your Lawes Statutes customes nothing else but heavenly truth and all your businesse civill and naturall shall be holy to the Lord blessed Ordinances of Heaven you shall be in all of them in the light of God and minister in Gods presence Vpon the horse bridles upon the pots upon all things written holinesse to the Lord And righteousnesse shall look down from Heaven Heaven shall shine forth to you righteous lawes You shall see the same things done in Heaven that are done in the earth looking in each others face and answering one another heer in THIS world earth will be no burden to Heaven being new and Heaven no trouble to earth no stranger when shee shewes her face and looks out she is the same thing and both joyning together salvation springs forth of them the Earth by her fellowship with Heaven brings forth good fruit peace righteousnesse and justice for the Land and the Earth without Heaven brings forth nothing but cold dead Lawes and Heaven without Earth but airy phansies both in conjunction make a compleat happinesse Now shall we meet together all Sorts in a generall assembly in the light of Heaven as golden candlesticks The holy one walkes in the midest of us emptying the golden Oyle by golden pipes from his golden self into his golden vessels his ministers And in this holy assembly sitting in the light of God all things shall be manifest to us wee shall see the whole forme of the house of God all the doors windows and pillars of it nothing of its statutes and ordinances shall be hid from us no error shal go undiscovered unrefuted all that have gon astray shall be brought back the ignorant shall be instructed the opposing and dissenting convinced and the obstinate rejected and cast out such a harmony and consent of hearts and mindes in this love and light must needs bring forth blessed fruit What ever is true in any religion we shall owne what is false we shall judge The darkness of Popery shall fall before our light we shall undermine the Kingdome of darknesse and set up truth in that beauty and majesty as shall gain all hearts upon such firme pillars as none can move her Wee feare not Papists nor all their strength we shall need no Lawes against them but The Law of the Spirit of life which wee know will over-come them The Gates of our Heavenly Jerusalem shall be open night and day let who will come in or go out No Vncleane thing shall enter into us But all the KINGS of the Earth all the wisdome state pompe and glory of Rome and all the World must bring their glory to this City this New Jerusalem And all the Nations upon Earth that shall be saved shall walke in the light of it Chap. XX. Of the restoration of the Army Levellers and City of London THE Army is but a particular part and that temporary and occasionall and is by this bright shining of the Sun of Righteousnes meltted into a generall peace and unity but lying under a particular condemnation it shall receive a particular discharge And we know thy imployment is so irksome and unpleasant to thee To be the kingdomes Gaoler to keep war in and peace out or to stand in the way to the Tree of life with a flaming sword to keep men from the injoyment of their liberty KING peace though thou art commanded to it by God these things being yet forbidden the people yet thou wilt be glad to be released from it that thou and all other may come into the Paradise of God and feed together upon the fruit of Divine peace and love There is under thy assuming power over the Kingdome King and Parliament and all and in thy maintaining thy Military power above and against the Civill in thy seeking thy owne subsisting and attempting to bee the Kingdomes Lord and restorer The Lord cloathing himself with zeal as with a garment incompassing himself about with flames of fire A Man of War a Lord of Hosts Casting away his Fatherly Government because of the Nations rebellion in all parts against himselfe and ruling us with a Rod of Iron God marching before us out of Egypts slavery into a Wildernesse turning us from a Civil Government into a Wildernesse and incamping in the midest of us and administering Laws to us as at sinai in thundering and lightning clouds and darknensse so terrible that makes all tremble A yoke that neither we nor our Fathers are able to beare And so we see Gods severity under mans iniquities And because it is the Lords Rod we kisse the Rod and love you for it Death is proper for this administration The Lord our Husband the Law dies wee were bound to honour you so long as you lived in the power and goodnes of God The whole Kingdome bowed before you while you led us safely through the Wildernes But Moses cannot bring us into Canaan but must only have a view of it and dye at mount Nebo This power is weak through the flesh and cannot do it if you contend now to effect any thing it is but the Devil striving for the body of Moses you are labouring to set up an honourable carcasse or to call back life into a dead body Christ did come into it and hath offered it up in his owne body and naild this power fast to the Tree you are dead fixt to the tree of shame by the curse with your Lord and by death you shall over come more then ever you overcame by life submitting to death your wils reasons lusts your seeking a worldly Kingdome your desire of lording it over others by force of armes with all your projects are slaine and all enmity in you against others and others against you Death hath disbanded you easd you of your hellish and wrathfull imployment Reconciled you to all and all to you brought you from being Turkish Janisaries to bee English men You are disolved into a body of love into GOD